Truck smuggling migrants crashes leaving 19 dead in Libya

TMP – 27/02/2018

Photo credit: REUTERS / Hani Amara. Victims of a truck accident, mostly Eritrean and Somali migrants, at a Libyan hospital.

A truck smuggling migrants crashed 60 kilometers southeast of the Libyan town of Bani Walid leaving at least 19 migrants dead and many more injured.

According to IOM, four children were among those killed.

Conflicting reports put the number of migrants on board the vehicle at between 180 and 300. The migrants, most of them Eritrean, Somali and Ethiopian nationals, were being transported to Tarhuna, 40 miles southeast of the Libyan capital Tripoli.

“The smugglers’ truck crashed when it drove into a large hole in the road; overloaded with people, it became unbalanced.” migrants who were on board of the vehicle reported.

Bani Walid hospital manager Mohamed al-Mabrouk said at least 78 people had been injured, eight of them seriously. “We did not receive the driver (at the hospital), and we don’t know what has happened to him,” said Mabrouk. “Most likely he’s survived otherwise he would be brought here.”

Many of the migrants, who were involved the accident, are reported to have been taken by the smugglers to an unknown location.
Bani Walid is a town known as a hub for smugglers and a transit point for migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean in a bid to reach Italy.

Smugglers bring migrants by road from neighbouring countries up to Libya’s Mediterranean coast where they are often held and transported in brutal conditions, passed between smugglers who take payments for different stages of the journey and extort money from migrants.